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One Year…

It was one year ago today that I lost my dad Ray…I was on a flight back from California where I was visiting my sister and he went to Kroger to go grocery shopping for Ellie and I to visit the next day. They think he had a stroke in the parking lot and flipped his car over. He was still alive at the scene but when he got to the hospital they had to give him lots of meds to keep his blood pressure up and the swelling in his brain was so bad that the doctors determined him to be brain-dead. He was on a breathing tube.

I got the call from my sister when my plane landed in Detroit. I left my luggage at the airport and headed to the hospital. My dad's body was there but he was no where in there…. he was already gone. I told him it was okay if he wanted to leave… he lead such a great life and at the age of 93 (he would have been 94 the next month) he was still getting around, grocery shopping and living the life he wanted.

My dad wasn't religious, in the traditional sense. In fact, he declared he was agnostic. But the lessons I learned from Ray, especially late in his life, were many and he lived his life in a more "Christian" way than most Christians I know.

He made me laugh, he made me smile, he would give you the shirt off his back or his last 5 bucks even if he just met you, he loved babies (especially his grand-babies), he did the USA Today crossword every day, he was practically a vegetarian – eating mostly pasta and beans, he loved chips (Sour cream was his favorite) and ice cream, he served in WWII and fought the Germans, he used to play violin in church when he was a little boy, he grew up in Detroit, he was married twice, he had four children and two grandchildren and one great-grandson and he taught me how to love and how to keep your promise and how to be a parent.